Untitled - Electric Scotland

1842-50] RECOVERY FROM ILLNESS 137
duties at Rugby. May I feel no distrustful anxiety. Thou knowest
what is best. Thou wilt find enough for me to do either in acting
or in suffering for Thee."
These thoughts recur almost daily in the rough journal
which he kept with even more than usual regularity in
his two last years at Rugby. In the journals there is
little or nothing except prayers, with now and then such
comments as the following :
"I still find great difficulty in fixing my thoughts for prayer
unless I use the help of writing. If I use a printed form, my
prayers are not sufficiently a direct approach to God. Yet if I
pray without a form, it is dreadful to feel how my thoughts wander.
Lord, give me the spirit of prayer ; I have all my life long felt
my sad want of it."
He kept manfully to his work, and some of his
colleagues used to maintain that his lectures to the
Sixth Form in his last year of office were the best he
ever gave. But his friends grew increasingly anxious,
and it was a relief both to him and to them when an
opportunity was given to him of laying down a burden
which undoubtedly overtaxed his strength. On October
1 8, 1849, ne received through Lord John Russell the offer
of the vacant Deanery of Carlisle, and at once accepted
the post.
was
"
Perhaps his life at Rugby," writes Dean "
Lake,
the least marked period of Tait s career, though I think it
greatly developed some of his best qualities. It was the
happiest time of his life, when he delighted to have his
intimate friends staying with him, and all varieties of
opinion were discussed, almost with the animation, though
with much less than the vehemence, which sometimes
marked the still more interesting conversations of Arnold.
It is difficult to imagine any scenes more pleasant than
V
those of the drawing-room, or the long walks and rides at